


under weight

by youcouldmakealife



Series: between the teeth [11]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 08:19:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1503446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first hat trick of David’s NHL career doesn’t make the highlight reel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	under weight

The weeks pass, and they’re uneventful. They win some and they lose some, David plays well sometimes and he plays games he’s not proud of, and he goes home and he goes to bed, and he doesn’t think of much of anything at all when he’s falling asleep.

Kurmazov tries to take him aside again, a night David’s been dragged out after a good win, one that the husbands and fathers go out to, not just the young guys, so he doesn’t have much of an excuse to bow out. Leans down to David against the end of the bar, where he’s found himself a mostly quiet spot, asks how he’s been. 

David tells him about wanting to work on sharper passes, because he knows he’s been missing the mark more than he should, especially with an experienced line, and feels panic, low in his stomach, when Kurmazov looks more and more dissatisfied as he talks. He’s never been more grateful to Benson in his life than when he butts into the conversation, wheedling about buying the rookie drinks, because first goal in the NHL deserved shots, twenty-one or not. Kurmazov turns to talk to him, probably okaying it, which Benson knew he would. Benson just likes the attention, David thinks, not charitably, knowing he’s not charitable, wondering if Jake made the kind of noises with Benson that he made with David or not. Bites the inside of the cheek until he stops thinking about it. 

Even so, he is grateful, takes the chance to duck into the bathroom while Kurmazov’s attention is on Benson, avoids Kurmazov the rest of the night. Kurmazov offers to help him with passes after practice the next day, which David takes him up on, but Kurmazov doesn’t try to talk about pointless things again.

*

His phone’s silent.

*

The first hat trick of David’s NHL career doesn’t make the highlight reel. 

David doesn’t usually watch the packaged sports highlights, the showy saves and goals. He thinks the whole flow of the game is more important as a gauge. It’s not like the Islanders show up often anyway, no matter what they do, attention fixed firmly on the teams that have an actual chance for the playoffs, the games that ‘matter’, as if the Islanders were just wasting everyone’s time. But tonight he’s glowing with pride, and he wants to see it, the three goals he only felt, actually savour the moment now that he’s outside of it. 

The team took him out after the game, or at least some of them, Kurmazov’s hand firm and warm on the back of David’s neck when he shook him by it, some idiot ordering David shots, Benson taking them with unusual equanimity when David nudged them over. He had a couple beers, though, felt he deserved it, so he’s just a little loose, warm from it, the hats on the ice, the stupefied goalie, the crowd lit up for him, when he finds the recaps.

They don’t show his hat trick, just slide right into a horrorshow, the worst kind of spectacle. The Penguins and the Flyers, always good for a brawl and some bad blood, though this is just bad luck, the worst kind of luck, a hard slapshot and a body at the exact wrong angle to take it. 

The remainder of the half-hour is replays in increasingly slow motion, at every single possible angle, talking heads discussing the potential fall-out, but all David needed to see was the full-speed replay, knowledge right in his gut: that career’s over. They keep lingering over the details like they enjoy them: the full volume replay, the distraught Penguins bench, the whitefaced Flyers, some unaffiliated doctor guessing what the damage is, the Penguins captain shaky and pale in front of the outstretched hands, recorders running. It makes David sick, the way they suck every moment dry, but he can’t stop watching it, frozen with the remote still by his hand, the whole thing a waking nightmare. 

Once they’ve spent a good twenty minutes on it, they wrap up the rest of the night in the briefest of snapshots--David’s hat trick’s mentioned, but there’s no footage, just an afterthought in the broadcast. It’s an afterthought for him too, at that point.

He sleeps like shit.

*

 _Is he okay?_ David sends Jake the next morning, early, because he woke hours before his alarm and couldn’t will himself back to sleep. The only time David met Petersen, he was hanging along with Jake and his buddy, introduced as the little lady. Helped David lug Jake’s drunk ass to bed. Seemed as unimpressed with Jake as David was. David liked him for that. 

_no not really_ , he gets back ten minutes later.

 _Tell him I’m sorry._ , David sends back, immediately, because he wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not the person he hated most in the world. When he’d slept it’d been fractured, anxious, and he’d woken up in a cold sweat. Injuries happen every day, but not that kind, the kind that ends a career in a second, where all the rehab in the world won’t put you back together, keep you a hockey player. David doesn’t know what he’d do without hockey. He’s tried not to think about it, and if he does, he thinks of it as a far-off eventuality, something he won’t have to face until his late thirties, forties if he takes care of himself. Petersen was drafted a year ahead of him, and now he’s got nothing. Or maybe he does. David doesn’t know him. 

David wouldn’t have anything at all.

 _ok_ , he gets back, then nothing, not when he checks it ten minutes later, not an hour later, not at all.

*

 _good game_ , he does get three days later, after a two-pointer. Maybe not a hat trick, but it was a good game, a win against Boston, which was rare for them. A textbook five-hole goal and one he set-up for Kurmazov to tap in while David took the flak around the net. Jake had sent him those kinds of texts earlier in the season, only when David actually had a good game, not just when he got a point or a goal, and David had sent back _Thanks_ , or nothing at all, because he wasn’t exactly sure what to say.

This time he sends back _You were really good last night_ , because it’s the truth. He’s sure Jake’s gotten it from a dozen people already, at least, that he knows exactly how good he was, but when Jake’s name had flashed in his messages David’s heart was in his throat, and it’s an unpleasant feeling, there’s nothing good about it, but he likes the alternative less. He wants to keep feeling it if he can.

David tries his best to have good games. Not that he doesn’t do that by default--he can’t be trying harder, because he knows you can’t try harder than 100 percent, no matter how many idiots talk about 110 percent. But he tries to have good games, and for once he wants Jake to have them, to have every game be good if he can, because then David can text him and it isn’t weird. 

David spends Christmas in New York, because it’s snowing hard, and the airports are busy, and it wouldn’t make sense to go back to Ottawa just for two days, not if there’s a delay on the way there, maybe no flights back, Ottawa under more snow than New York. He could miss a game, and that’d be a disaster, so instead he stays there, finds a nearby church that offers midnight mass. He hasn’t gone since he was a kid, since his dad was around, and the last Prime Minister was in office, and they’d go because that was kind of part of his mom’s job too. The current Prime Minister isn’t an Anglican, and David hasn’t gone in years, didn’t even like it as a kid, the whole thing solemn and stuffy, more people looking at their row with the Prime Minister than the Reverend up front. It’s less like that this time; still solemn, but in a way David appreciates, and no one’s craning their head to look at where he’s sitting.

He sleeps right after he gets home, sleeps in, even, wakes up at ten to a missed call from his mother and a text from Jake. _merry xmas!!_ it says, and David doesn’t know if it’s a mass text, probably is, but still sends _Merry Christmas_ before he tucks his phone away and goes to make himself breakfast.

They play on Boxing Day, thankfully, get right back into it, a few of the Canadians bemoaning playing on a holiday, which gets a bunch of hearty eyerolls from the rest of the team. They win that game, and the next, the one following, and go into January hot, lose a game in overtime but stay undefeated through the first week, and David feels like maybe this year’s different.

It’s a stupid thought, and he’s reminded of that when they immediately drop three straight as soon as the fans are perking up, the team slipping into a funk that wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t gotten excited about it, at playing like a legitimate contender. Even Kurmazov, typically unflappable, gets kind of down about it. David wishes he hadn’t had the thought in the first place.

They play the Panthers at the end of January, after losing as many as they’ve won, the last time they’re facing them until the end of the season. They’re on the road from Tampa when David gets a text from Jake, just _good luck_ , and he wants to send the same, but it feels like betraying something. He sends _See you on the ice._ , though, just so Jake knows he’s seen it.

It’s about as uneventful game as they come, even more than the last one, the kind that even bores David a little; both goalies airtight, but no real chances either, no pretty plays, just two fatigued teams going easy against a weak opponent, a blank slate into overtime, and then a shootout, because someone has to win.

It’s the Panthers who do it, another loss to add to the Islanders’ tally, though at least they wrung a point out of it. No one’s particularly proud of themselves, but no one’s particularly pissed off either, the locker room like a collective shrug, a team giving up. David doesn’t want to give up, it’s too early still, but the feeling’s starting to stick to him.

He’s still dripping from his shower, trying to avoid the small crowd of reporters who seem no more interested in him than he is in talking to them, when his phone buzzes in his suit pocket, and he snatches it out. _u busy?_ he gets, and he bites his lip hard against the involuntary smile, just writes back _No_ , slipping his phone back in his pocket and getting dressed.

Jake’s leaning against the far wall when David walks out, deja vu, almost, and he smiles when he sees David, smaller than the big, beaming grin he usually aims at David--at everyone, really--but a smile. David tentatively smiles back. 

“You hungry?” Jake asks, shoving off the wall.

“I just had a protein bar,” David says honestly, and then when Jake’s face drops, just a little. “But we could get drinks or something.”

“Coffee,” Jake says.

David doesn’t point out that it’s way too late to be drinking coffee. He thinks that might not be the point. He doesn’t really want to stick around either, in case Benson and company wander out and try to take Jake out. David would go, probably, but he doesn’t want to if he doesn’t have to. 

He’s right about it not being the point. After an awkward cab ride where David tries to think of something, anything he can say that will stop Jake from drumming his fingers against his knees like he never did in Toronto--tries and fails--they end up at a coffee shop but Jake doesn’t order coffee either, gets some sort of complicated smoothie that the girl behind the counter seems to have memorized, makes her laugh while she’s blending it for him, smiling at him wide. David wouldn’t be surprised if Jake ended up with her number on his cup. If he didn’t already have it. 

David buys an overpriced bottle of water just so he won’t have empty hands. Jake glances at it, but doesn’t say anything, not even to tease him, like he always did when David got something Jake considered boring, which was all the time. David clutches it self-consciously, the bottle sweating in his hand, follows Jake back to cushy chairs in the back, the place mostly empty around them. It closes in a half-hour, David saw the hours when they walked in, and David isn’t really sure what that means.

Jake sinks into the far seat, leaves David to sit across, elbows on his knees, twisting the cap off the bottle of water for something to do instead of stare at him. 

“How’ve you been?” Jake asks, and David raises one shoulder in a shrug before realising that’s not all that much of an answer.

“It hasn’t been a very good season,” David says finally.

Jake looks at him, doesn’t say anything, and David looks away, takes a sip of water.

“You’ve been good,” Jake says finally.

“Sometimes,” David allows. “How are you?” he asks, after another silence settles, and of course Jake has an answer to that, news about his sister getting into grad school and his cousin getting married, the Panthers’ hopes, the new rookie who’s started looking a little crazy around the eyes from the pranking, and how Jake’s just waiting for the most epic prank of all time to come from him, either that or he knocks someone out.

David listens, looking up at Jake when he pauses, at his hands while Jake talks, and the girl behind the counter comes out, starts cleaning up, stacking chairs on tables, until they’re the only ones left and David knows it’s past closing.

“Oh,” Jake says, looking around like he just realised they’re the only ones there, like he didn’t know it was going to be closing. “We probably should head out.”

David doesn’t know what the plan is, what Jake’s plan is, but he thinks maybe he does, or maybe he just--maybe he just wants it to be. 

He doesn’t know how he gets up the nerve to say it, but he’s always been brave when he has to be, took the strides to Quebec, to New York, and he did them himself, and needed no one to help him. This isn’t the same thing, but.

“Should we go back to your place?” David asks, and can feel his face flushing, throat tight, but he gets the words out and he can’t take them back.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jake says quietly after a moment. 

“Do you have a girlfriend or something?” David asks, doesn’t know why he doesn’t just drop it. his cheeks are hot. He feels nauseous. He should just go. Jake made it pretty clear, and Jake’s nice about things, David’s noticed that about him, that it’s not as fake as it seems, so that’s probably as nice an answer as he’s going to get. He should go. 

“No,” Jake says. “I just--maybe we should try being friends first.”

“Isn’t that what friends do?” David asks blankly.

Jake looks wry. “What, you think I do this with all my buddies?”

David blinks at him, and the smile drops from Jake’s mouth.

“Wait, you think that?” he asks.

“Don’t you?” David asks.

“That’s--” Jake starts, visibly stops himself. “No. I. _No._ ”

“Benson--” David starts.

“Gross,” Jake says with feeling. 

“Everyone says you were really close at the WJC,” David argues. 

“I can be friends with someone without fucking around with them,” Jake says. “Jesus, David. Is that what you thought?”

David chews his lip, shrugs after a moment. 

“What did you think Toronto was?” Jake asks. 

“I was convenient,” David says quietly. 

Jake barks out a laugh. “You are the least convenient person I’ve ever met,” he says. It feels like a compliment, even though David knows it isn’t one. 

“Oh,” he just says, bites down the reflex to say ‘thank you’. 

“Can we just start over?” Jake asks, and then when David doesn’t say anything, at a loss, “Like. Okay.” He reaches his hand across the table. “Hi, I’m Jake.”

“I know,” David says.

Jake snorts. “What’s your name?” he asks pointedly. 

“You know my name,” David says. He’s maybe being difficult on purpose, but it makes Jake smile, so he isn’t going to admit it. 

“You are the most infuriating person in the world,” Jake says, but he’s grinning wide at David, so that feels like a compliment too. 

‘Thank you’, David doesn’t say. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says instead, feeling stupid about it.

“You too,” Jake says, and David wants to kiss his smile, but doesn’t.


End file.
